


Convection

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Domestic Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Stress Baking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:39:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy calls; and Riza answers; and even sixteen years later, she knows him better than he thinks.</p><p>[Spoilers for Brotherhood!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Convection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeneathSilverStars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeneathSilverStars/gifts), [InkdropFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkdropFox/gifts).



> This is [Sam's fault](http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc157/tierfal/sirIdontwantacookie0_zps42ceac69.jpg) (from the [chimera!Ed RP](http://aroussalayn.tumblr.com/obts)!). And also Silver's, for [calling](http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc157/tierfal/sirIdontwantacookie_zps5e9033af.jpg) [me out](http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc157/tierfal/sirIdontwantacookie2_zpsbc13de10.jpg) in the best possible way. :'D You guys are two of the most beautiful, brightest little lights in this fandom for me. Thank you both. ♥
> 
> Also, the LJ warnings for this fic include:  
>  _tiny-super-serious-could-kill-a-man-woodsy-huntress-baby!Riza is the only young Hawkeye headcanon I can ever have_  
>  and  
>  _don't read this if you're looking for pre-Royai, because you will be disappointed_  
>  …both of which I think bear repeating. XD''

When the phone rings on Saturday night, just past eight, Riza is cleaning her guns at the kitchen table and knows exactly who it is.

She puts the pieces down, crosses the room, and answers the phone with a neutral “Hello?” anyway.

“Hi,” Roy says.  He’s _Roy_ at times like this.  They’ve never talked about it, but neither of them has ever mistaken it, so they’ve never had to.  There’s something in the instigator’s voice that makes them both children again, for a moment.  Roy and Riza.  Nothing more or less than a pair of very lonely adolescents whose forced companionship has metamorphosed into a friendship that a thousand years of time and tragedy could not destroy.  “Are you busy?”

It’s best not to offer until you know what he’s asking for.  “Why?”

He clears his throat like he’s ready to announce it.  “I—” …and lowers his voice to release it as a sigh.  “—baked.”

Ah.  She should have known.  His next promotion is currently under review, and the soon-to-be-Brigadier-General Roy Mustang—decorated war hero, extraordinary alchemist, professional procrastinator—is a stress-baker.

It used to be just _cooking_ , broadly defined: any type of food preparation at all.  She doesn’t know when he first discovered the tendency, but she did when she was twelve, and he was fourteen, mere weeks after he’d moved into the spare room in her father’s house and greatly upset the highly-specific order of her life.

Faint noises from the kitchen had woken her at some shadowy hour, and she’d slipped out of bed and crept down the hall with her hunting knife behind her back, only to find the table blanketed in books and the counter a chaos of dishes.  The irritating young interloper with the sharp, dark eyes was, predictably, in the middle of it, muttering to himself nonstop.  He startled so hard when he saw her that he fumbled the metal measuring cups in his hands and very nearly dropped them to the floor.

“It—it’s chemistry,” he said.  “Helps clear my head.”

She’d overheard some solemn-sounding discussion as she passed by the library the other day.  Apparently this extremely unimpressive boy had tricked her father into thinking he was worth a damn, which he was supposed to demonstrate with his performance on a customized exam.  The exam in question was, if she recalled correctly, set for tomorrow.

This Mustang kid had been a pain in the ass since he set foot over the threshold of the door—he was _always_ in the way, shoving his nose and his presence into her sacred schedule until she had to rewrite it around him; he was _always_ talking, like words just rattled around in his mouth all hours of the day, and sometimes he simply couldn’t hold them in; and he was _always_ trying to clean up his messes by putting everything back all _wrong_.

And he always—particularly now—looked slightly… lost.  Like he wasn’t sure where he was going, and he didn’t quite know where he’d come from, and he wasn’t ready to give up yet, but he was struggling to remember why.

That she understood, whether she liked it or not.

She sat down at the table, laid her knife on top of one of the books, and looked him in the (slightly intimidated) eyes.

“What are you making?” she asked.

A lot of things have changed since then.  _They’ve_ changed.

And Roy met Gracia, then met Gracia’s pie, then latched onto baking not long after Ishval, and he’s never looked back.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the purpose of it.  He doesn’t particularly care if you eat his creations—which have always been surprisingly palatable, all told.  It’s the action that’s important.  It’s the outlet.

He doesn’t call because he wants her to come over and stuff herself full of pastries.  He calls because he doesn’t want to be alone.

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” she says.

  


* * *

  


Twenty-two minutes later—she likes to give herself some leeway—she knocks.

“It’s open!” Roy’s voice calls.

The smell hits her in a warm wave the second she steps in.  She locks the door behind her and turns both deadbolts, and then she hangs up her coat and heads into the kitchen.

“Good Lord,” she says before she can stop herself.

“Sorry,” Roy says, as if he has somehow imposed on her by covering his entire dining table with quick breads, scones, and cookies of every possible variety.  “I… got a little carried away.”

“I can see that,” she says.

He crouches in front of the oven, turns the light on, peers at whatever the next batch is, flicks the light back off, and stands again.  He pushes his hands into his trouser pockets, leans against the counter, and makes an attempt at looking dignified, which is equal parts ridiculous and strangely cute.

“Do you want anything?” he asks.

“Not especially,” she says.  “I already ate.”

He smiles faintly and runs a hand through his hair.  Which puts flour in it.  She’s not going to tell him.  He gestures to the oven.  “Do you want to help me take it all to the shelter after these come out?”

“All right,” she says.

He crosses to the table and drops into one of the chairs, setting his elbow on the tabletop, and casts a baleful gaze over the mid-sized mountain of baked goods.  “I need to stop doing this.”

Riza sits down opposite him.  “Why?”

She wonders how much of it he’s analyzed.  Roy is brilliant with people—brilliant at understanding human beings, at decoding their expressions, at unraveling their lies, at tracing their motivations backwards and peeling all the flourishes away to find the roots—but he has something of a blind spot when it comes to himself.

She wonders if he’s ever thought about the timing, and the implications, of his love for _baking_ in particular.

She wonders if he knows that he’s obsessed with doing something harmless now with heat.

He glances over at her, and then he smiles, less crookedly this time.

“Good point,” he says.

  


* * *

  


It’s well past ten by the time she says goodbye.  Roy guilt-trips her into taking a little bag of shortbread, but he looks a lot less harried than he did when she arrived.  That probably has quite a bit to do with the way that, once he finally cracked and started to unfurl a laundry list of miscellaneous anxieties, she cut him off and told him he was getting the promotion.  He’d stared out the windshield of the car for a long moment, running his fingers absently along the curve of the wheel, and then tried to ask her how she could be so sure, at which point she told him to shut his trap and drive, unless he wanted the promotion in question to be posthumous.

Sometimes—she lets herself back into her own home, and Hayate is fascinated by the scent of the shortbread, which she can’t blame him for; Roy’s recipe is delicious—she thinks that Roy needs someone who will kick his ass more often, but more gently, than she does.  Sometimes she thinks Maes was right about the concept, if not the specifics—that Roy needs to settle down, because he needs someone to settle _him_.  Sometimes she thinks he needs someone who can be there to tell him to shut his trap _before_ he starts raiding all of the nearby grocery stores and testing the limits of his oven all night long.

Sometimes she thinks he needs someone who will eat faster than he can bake.

But that can wait.  Next week, he’ll have a new stripe on each of his shoulders, and a brand-new pile of paperwork to pretend to ignore.  Maybe she’ll start leaving recipes for baked dog treats in amongst the stacks—it’s worth a try.

She leaves the shortbread on the counter and leans down to scratch behind Hayate’s ears.

Things have changed.  They’ve changed.

But not too much.


End file.
